Amateur cinematographers who wish to inject a touch of originality into their home movie titles will find the following trick quite interesting. Unlike the familiar stunt of having groups of letters suddenly fly into view and arrange themselves in the form of a title, this effect is that of a quantity of letters raining past the view. At intervals certain ones affix themselves at random to the easel to spell out the title.

ONE hundred motion picture cameramen, officially assigned by the imperial German government of the ex-kaiser to film German troops in action during the great war, were required to take the remarkable war scenes now being shown in theaters throughout the country under the title, “Behind the German Lines.”

DO you remember back in the days of the “three R’s” when you drew the little single-line figures on the corner of your speller and by “flipping” the leaves caused them to come to life and to go through antics highly amusing if not exactly enlightening?

They’ve changed all that now. With the ever-increasing popularity of the movie, educators and business men have not been slow to realize that those little figures could be made to do something besides fight and fiddle.

Given that radioactivity was discovered by Henri Becquerel when he noticed that Uranium salts were fogging his photographic plates, you’d think the film makers would have thought of this problem ahead of time.

Lead Shields Protect Men Filming Radium Story

DURING the filming of a motion picture dramatizing the use of radium, elaborate precautions were observed to protect workers from the element’s radiations. The cameraman operated behind a lead shield featuring a glass panel, while a workman who handled the radium used flexible gauntlets of fabricated lead and wool which were attached to a special observation shield of lead and glass.

Production was almost halted when the camera film became cloudy and diffused through exposure to the radium radiations but technicians were able to develop a film suitable for the job.

Amateur movie-making enthusiasts may prepare their own titles, including animated ones, with the aid of a new title writer. This device, an illuminated stand with an easel at front and a place for the camera at the rear, works in three positions. When set at an angle, as shown above, it permits a hand to be photographed drawing a title. A vertical setting films movable letters for an animated title.